Arkosa Board Game - Quick How to Play

hi it's tarrant and stella from meeple university today we'll show you a quick how to play or overview for arcosa and so hopefully you'll get a bit of flavor for this game coming up [Music] we do a lot of how to play live playthrough videos and more and so if you find value from this video later please hit the like button subscribe to us hit the bell and leave your feedback in the comments for others to find for now let's get to the table arcosa is a tableau and action pool building game set on the desolate planet of arcosa in which players compete to build the best habitable bunker to protect themselves from the elements it was designed by angela dickens and published by toon hammer the game plays 2-4 players in 50-100 minutes with a solo mode also being developed and is of medium complexity in this video we're using a prototype copy of the game and so the art rules and components may not be final in arcosa players are factions on the inhospitable planet of arcosa trying to build the best underground bunker to satisfy their colonies the better their colony the more population they can attract and the closer they'll be to winning their freedom from the planet the game plays over three rounds and the player with the most reputation by the end of that time wins the game during the action phase of each round each player takes two actions per turn round and round the table until all players have passed there are four main actions you can play a colonist from your hand to your rest area to gain one of the groups of resources shown in the top bar of the card you may play a colonist to explore or utilize one of the spaces on the main board that shows a backpack matching an icon on the card you played here for example the factory but not the drop you advance the common exploration marker a number of spaces according to where you're exploring resolve the icon it lands on then pay the resources shown and resolve the space on the board either gaining a huge haul of resources or gaining a new colonist into your hand you can make trades with the game the basic resources of nitrogen and food are used for exploring and feeding your workers while the advanced resources of mag tape and scrap are used for building your bunker and finally you can pay resources to build a new room in your bunker as all of the cards and rooms on the board are first come first served this makes the sequencing of players actions very important and key to the tactics of the game after actions are done players feed their colonists with nitrogen and food score points based on their position on the morale track which will go up and down constantly as players take different actions trigger the production of new resources from all of their powered rooms and finally pick up all of their resting colonists back into hand for use again next round central to the game are the events as players take exploration actions they will trigger event cards which range from the low risk green events to the high risk red events players draw these at random and then either earn the rewards or suffer the consequences before taking their on-board action there are also raid events which represent attacks from arcosa's resident hostile creatures these are triggered by the active player but they could affect any player based on the criteria on the drawn card some events may injure your colonists making them unavailable until you've healed them either with another action or with the help of the sometimes unreliable doctor sawbones apart from thematically reflecting the dangers of this planet this also mixes up the outcomes of every game meaning no single strategy will work every time and it forces the players to make difficult choices between taking the best onboard action and risking a nasty event which might come along with it points come from four main sources by holding and maintaining maximum morale scoring these points each round and scoring ongoing points for any additional morale by assembling a strong hand of six high-scoring colonists from exploring by filling your bunker with up to nine high scoring rooms from building and by taking and fulfilling bribe cards an action which opens up later in the game allowing players to score bonus reputation for excess resources at the end of the game the player with the most reputation points after three rounds of play are complete is the winner arcosa combines mechanics from a fairly straightforward tableau building game with a sharply restrictive round limit the low scoring rooms and colonists are necessary for your early engine building but you may not end up with enough time to swap them all out for higher scoring alternatives this makes the efficiency and timing of this into enjoyable and critical decision points in the game the probabilistic elements introduced by the event cards also force players to make tough risk-based decisions as they optimize their colonies the game will also come with a solo mode which is still in development at the time of this video and that's quick how to play of our koso hope you enjoy the video we are using a prototype copy of the game and so the rules and components may not be final and do check out the project page for this game we will put the link in the description below and if you find this video useful please help us by hitting that like button subscribe to us you can also hit the meeple in the corner to do so and hit the bell icon so you'll be one of the first to know when we have new and exciting videos you can also follow me on instagram for my board games journey and if you have any questions comments or feedback please leave them in the comment section below see you next time